


In Which Steve Gets Punched in the Face and Makes a Friend

by Dandesun



Series: In Which Shenanigans Ensue [7]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Attempted Roofie, Bucky Needs to Catch Up, Developing Friendships, Friendship, Gratitude Equals Pizza and Cupcakes, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Male-Female Friendship, Misunderstandings, Pre-Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Steve Does Not Stand on the Sidelines When Things Go Down, Steve Steps Up, Steve's Broken Nose, frat party, mentions of bullying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 18:11:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10195931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dandesun/pseuds/Dandesun
Summary: Steve agrees to go to Halloween on Fraternity Row with Sam. Steve sees a situation about to go south and intervenes. Confrontations, broken noses, new friendships, Halloween costumes and a completely smitten and clueless Bucky Barnes result. Shenanigans ensue.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is it. The idea that pretty much started it all. (Actually, it was a bit more vague than that but... semantics.) But the idea fleshed out as Steve rescuing Jane and becoming besties with her while Bucky gazed at Steve from afar and lusted hard for an angry cat boy with a bloody nose. Here's how it all played out.

“Hey. Rum Tum Tugger. Are you ready?”

Steve gave himself a final once-over in the mirror then put his brush down and stood up to face Sam. “First of all, how dare you. Second of all, how do you even know who Rum Tum Tugger is?”

“My mom loves Andrew Lloyd Webber,” Sam shrugged. “Saturday was house cleaning day and it was either Webber soundtracks or Earth, Wind and Fire.”

“Your mom continues to fascinate me.”

“As your costume fascinates me,” Sam nodded at Steve with a critical eye. “What are you supposed to be?”

Steve looked down at himself. His battered jeans and t-shirt with The Clash emblazoned on it were an admittedly strange combination with the mismatched cat ears, arm warmers and fingerless gloves. The combat boots and three studded belts polished off the street punk aesthetic he was going for. “I’m an alley cat.” He studied Sam’s costume. “Although I think people are just going to think I got Chewbacca all wrong.”

“That’s because Han Solo gets all the attention.”

“I can’t believe you’re not going as Lando.”

“Because he’s black?”

“Because he wears a cape!”

Sam laughed.

Steve grinned and considered himself pretty lucky, and not for the first time, that he’d scored the jackpot of roommates. Sam was cool, friendly, funny and just all around nice. (Not to mention that he got regular care packages from home filled with delicious homemade cookies that Steve was certain could buy him organs on the black market if he were the type to do that. Which he wasn’t.) Sam’s general awesomeness was a pleasant surprise given that Steve had been prepared for having to deal with a bullying jerk like the ones he went to high school with. Sam was a living, breathing reminder that things, indeed, got better.

However, that didn’t mean that Sam didn’t go for the cliche every once in awhile. Instead of going across campus to where the LGBT Alliance was having a Halloween party, Sam begged Steve to go to Fraternity Row and hit the various parties there. Sam was straight but had gone to a few meetings at the Alliance with Steve because he considered himself an Ally and wanted to support his roommate and new friend.

Sam was a very cool and nice guy so Steve agreed to go to Fraternity Row. He’d also promised his mother that he would do some full on cliched college things and Steve couldn’t think of anything that fit the bill better than Halloween frat parties.

“Why don’t any of the cat parts of your costume match?”

“I’m a calico.”

“You know, usually girls go as cats.”

“I do not subscribe to your gender norms.”

Sam laughed. Everything Steve did seemed to be a statement of some kind. The thing was, Steve didn’t just talk the talk, he walked the walk and that was apparent even in their few months of acquaintance. Steve was an actual Artist and a passionate one at that. Sam found him inspiring and interesting even if Steve’s tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve for everything got him into trouble. He eyed Steve again. “You know, some aggressive sorority gang is going to try to make you their pet by the end of the night.”

“Yeah,” Steve sighed. “But I’m wily and slippery. I’ll be all right.” Drunk girls thought he was adorable and always threatened to adopt him which was not usually the response he hoped for. Being bisexual wasn’t quite the smorgasbord that some people thought it was supposed to be. Making out with a girl and having her giggle about putting him in her pocket was a boner killer and was pretty much how Steve expected this night to go.

He certainly wasn’t expecting any guys to hit on him at a frat house.

Turned out, he was right about that.

He was also right about being told he got Chewbacca all wrong but at least that came from people who were already smashed. As if Chewbacca ever wore a Clash t-shirt? But as the night wore on, Steve was wishing he had Chewbacca’s crossbow to shoot a few of the dumber people with. He would have enjoyed that.

========================

Bucky was trying to get up the nerve to hit on the prettiest cat boy he’d ever laid eyes on.

To be fair, he hadn’t seen all that many which made this particular cat boy even cuter. He was unique. Bucky was a big fan of unique despite the extreme lack of effort he had put into his own outfit.

This had all been Monty’s idea. Monty was a cool roommate and was from London which meant that he got embarrassing amounts of attention from various females (and some males as well.) They cooed over his accent like a bevy of doves. Monty had a charming smile and good manners yet could flip a switch and say the foulest things on a dime.

The ladies loved him.

But it did result in Monty being what Bucky would classify as the Worst Wingman Ever. Bucky had never had that much of a problem garnering attention for himself but found himself shoved aside for an English accent. It didn’t seem to matter which show or movie was their favorite, Sherlock, Dr. Who, Pride and Prejudice, Merlin, it still wound up with people cooing over Monty while Bucky grew increasingly frustrated in the background.

It just seemed only right that if you had a gaggle of hook up prospects about you’d throw your roommate a lifeline and include him. Monty didn’t seem to know about that part of the Unofficial Roommate Agreement.

Luckily, Bucky didn’t limit himself to one gender so Monty could have the girls if that’s the way things were going to go. If he were going to be honest, he did prefer guys. He was more of a 80/20 kind of bisexual than 50/50.

Monty wasn’t a bad guy. He was actually a pretty decent roommate all things considered. Sure, Bucky had been asked to vacate the premises more than a few times when Monty had scored but he’d absolutely said that it was only fair for Bucky to ask the same of him whenever he had a date he wanted to bring back to the room.

Bucky was keeping score. He’d be prepared.

And the rest of the guys on their floor were fun, too. It’s just that going out with Monty often turned into something of a drudge when every female in the vicinity kept asking his roommate to say something just to hear the accent. They’d ask Bucky the same thing but his slight New York accent wasn’t remotely exotic to them.

Monty had been very strategic about their going to the Halloween festivities on Fraternity Row which Bucky did not see the point of because it was a given that his roommate would be more than successful. To make a sure thing even surer, Monty had actually dressed up like Mr. Darcy.

“Give the rest of us a chance, Monty,” Bucky groaned.

“I’d be more inclined to take pity on you if you had bothered with an actual costume,” Monty replied with a grin. “Did you just fall into your closet and wear whatever you landed on?”

Bucky looked at himself. It wasn’t a bad guess. Black skinny jeans, dark blue shirt, black leather jacket, black studded cuffs and belt.

“You look like every roadie for a hair metal band in the 80s,” Monty said with a laugh. “Is that what you’re going for?”

“I’m going as a Bad Decision,” Bucky replied loftily. “It’s abstract.”

“It’s lazy.”

“Whatever,” Bucky shrugged. “Lazy is putting on riding pants and a jacket and speaking in your regular stupid accent.”

“Tut tut,” Monty grinned. “Your jealousy is showing.”

“I’m going to throw you out a window.”

Monty laughed. They had fallen into this sort of banter pretty quick. Insults, threats, general mayhem but none of it was serious.

“Even better? I’m going to find the hottest guy I can and fuck him on your bed.”

“Now that’s just mean, Barnes.”

“Maybe it is… but I’m saving that one for when you’re Englishness gets particularly odious.”

“Duly noted. Duly noted.”

All in all, Bucky could have done a lot worse when it came to roommates.

The first house they went to was actually a sorority and they’d decked the place out as some sort of homage to Grease. The girls were all done up in 50s style outfits and even though Bucky fit in fairly well with his leather jacket, the smudged makeup around his eyes was not exactly to period.

That was, however, the first glimpse he got of the cat boy.

The spiked belts, the Clash shirt, the mismatched cat accoutrements were all incidental to the beautiful mop of blonde hair, the strong yet delicate features, the big, blue eyes and the laugh… oh Lord have mercy the laugh… deep and rich and pleasant to the ear.

Bucky officially didn’t care about anything else the rest of the night. He needed to meet the adorable cat boy with the deep, rich laugh and convince him to come back to Bucky’s dorm for a little cat scratch fever.

He was currently surrounded, however, by a gaggle of poodle skirts and a black Han Solo.

That was fine. Bucky could be patient.

Little did he know.

========================

Well, at least Sam was having a good time.

Steve had actually hit his high point at the third house where he met a rather devastatingly beautiful redhead named Jean who seemed to be Over It and enjoyed sitting with him and judging the most cliched and repetitive costumes. Since she was dressed as Brigid, Celtic Goddess of Fire and not a Sexy Whatever, Steve felt she was more than qualified to judge. Then they realized they were in the same French class but sat completely across the room from each other.

They resolved to fix that next class and she left saying that Halloween on Fraternity Row was just too much but gave Steve her number to text him if anything interesting happened later on. The whole thing was friendly rather than flirty but it was still nice to hang out with someone fun while Sam was dancing.

After that, the evening went downhill.

Not in a particularly obvious way but Steve’s own sense of style and fun didn’t really mesh with the considerably more and more drunken fraternity nonsense.

Still, Sam was having a good time.

After getting cornered by a particularly drunk and aggressive young woman (anyone who breathed that much whiskey on him did not deserve to be called a ‘lady’) who spun an elaborate tale involving Steve chained to her bed, milk baths and some sort of shaving situation (Steve remained in the dark as to who was going to get shaved, him or her) well… Steve was about ready to call it a night. She was persistent, too, which just made the whole thing that much more intolerable.

But Steve hadn’t been joking when he told Sam he was wily and slippery. Plus, an excessively drunk person wasn’t too hard to give the slip to in the middle of a party.

Steve found his way to the corner of a makeshift bar in the frat house and settled back with some water. His mother had given him two pieces of advice before he left for school about drinking:

Never drink anything you didn’t open yourself.  
If you’re drinking hard alcohol and you feel it, it’s too late.

Practical advice and Steve had long since known that his mother didn’t dole out useless information. She was a nurse, she had certainly seen enough binge drinkers in her time working the ER and all of the variety they came in. The shift in mood in some corners had Steve feeling that it was probably best he wasn’t wasted. He had a nice buzz going while Sam was still dancing in the crowd so Steve settled back to have a breather.

That’s when he noticed the elf girl. She had taken some real care in her outfit which was impressive. Her long brown hair fell well past her shoulders and the intricate elven headpiece glistened beautifully against the glossy strands. Her pointed ears blended in perfectly with her skin tone and Steve could tell that all of this Mattered which was something he appreciated. No half-assing here.

So he was quietly admiring her outfit when he noticed her getting flanked by two guys who kept shooting looks at each other over her head. Steve had long ago developed an instinct about trouble and it was about to happen right here. He was as sure of that as he was his own name.

One of the guys kept trying to talk to her. Steve couldn’t hear what they were saying as the music was a bit too loud and he was seated far enough away for it to drown their voices. The girl did not seem particularly interested in their conversation. Her responses looked perfunctory and Steve could see her withdrawing into herself even as the guy seemed to loom over her. Steve felt his jaw clench. This guy was trouble. It looked like he was getting off on the girl shrinking away from him.

Steve was just about to go over to her and ask her if she wanted to dance to get her away from this guy when it turned ugly.

The guy gave a miniscule nod to the other guy that flanked the girl. The second guy ‘accidentally’ bumped into the girl, jostling her and drawing her attention while the first guy very quickly put something in her drink.

And that, as far as Steve was concerned, was all she wrote.

He flung himself off the barstool he was sitting on and started shoving his way through the partiers to get to her before it was too late.

Unfortunately, it took longer than he hoped. She was already drinking when he managed to get around to her. Steve didn’t hesitate, he leapt at her, arms flailing and knocked the cup out of her hand.

“Sorry!” Steve gasped, his face a picture of embarrassment as he hoped it just looked like he was drunk and clumsy. “Are you okay?” He looked at the girl worriedly.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said with a shrug. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Hey, watch it, twerp!” The guy who drugged the drink growled.

His friend pressed closer to the elf girl from behind.

Steve widened his eyes as he looked at the girl. “Oh my God, I haven’t seen you in _forever_!” He hoped she’d figure out that he was offering an escape and take him up on it, otherwise, Steve was going to have to cause a gigantic scene and that just wasn’t going to end well at all.

She cocked her head at him curiously, her brow furrowing in confusion.

“I can’t believe we ran into each other here of all places! We should totally catch up,” he said, holding his hand out to her and doing his best to telepathically tell her ‘come with me, please.’ “It’s been ages!”

“Hey,” the growl behind him took on a sharper edge. He felt the guy behind him poke him hard in the back. “The lady and I are having a conversation. Beat it, shrimp.”

Steve continued to hold eye contact with the girl. She looked at Steve, then the guy behind him and seemed to make up her mind. 

“No, no,” she told the guy. “It’s okay… sorry but I haven’t seen my friend here in _way_ too long. Do you mind?”

Before he could answer, Steve grabbed her hand and slipped into the crowd, dragging her with him. 

There was an angry ‘Hey!’ behind them but Steve hoped that the party would help camouflage their escape. He wasn’t sure how much of the drugged drink the elf girl drank but he was pretty sure the stuff hit pretty fast and he wanted to make sure she was safe before it did. Why did some guys just have to be such complete monsters?

“I’m Steve,” he said to her as they bolted into the hall. “That guy put something in your drink. Who do we need to find to get you out of here and safe?”

“I came with my friend Darcy,” she told him. “I’m Jane.”

And then it all turned into some Scooby-Doo chase scene as they tried to find Jane’s friend while being chased by an irate drink-drugger and his cronie. Except a lot less funny and without a Davy Jones song. It was extremely hard to try to find someone you didn’t know on a very crowded dance floor with disco lights liberally scattered about when the person who _did_ know the person you were looking for was quickly succumbing to whatever had been put in her drink. Also, trying to avoid two awful people at the same time made things difficult. Steve couldn’t even locate Sam in the throbbing crowd and he would have thought that the Han Solo vest and pants would draw the eye.

The drug hit quicker than Steve anticipated and it became pretty obvious that he needed to get Jane out of there and get a hold of her friend once she was out of reach of whoever the two assholes were that conspired to drug her in the first place.

So he made a break for it.

And failed.

This resulted in Steve finding himself in a situation that was all too familiar. Facing down a bully or two while a growing crowd of on-lookers jeered and cheered with no real thought to what was really going on or who was getting hurt. It was all entertainment to them. Steve focused on keeping himself between Jane and the Two Assholes and vowed to make it as difficult as possible for them to get to her. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what they had planned and there was simply no way in hell that Steve was going to let that happen as long as he had breath in him.

When Steve loudly and viciously announced what the Two Assholes had done he got a punch in the face and a warning from Asshole Number One that he had a big mouth and someone (Asshole Number One presumably) was doing everyone a favor by shutting it.

As if Steve hadn’t been punched in the face before. Hell, it wasn’t even like he hadn’t had his nose broken before which had definitely just happened and it hurt like all get out but Steve lived his entire life dealing with pain. This piece of shit wasn’t going to get him with one punch.

Of course, Steve’s accusation and the resulting punch had shifted the mood of some of the on-lookers. Suddenly, a lot of them didn’t want to get involved or even be aware of what was going on. Steve couldn’t say he was too surprised. Some things were better in college (Sam was an excellent example of that) but people were still people and a lot of them didn’t like to be confronted with ugly situations. Steve didn’t fear ugly situations so he spat the blood that was dripping into his mouth out and told everyone who had gathered to take a good long look at the Two Assholes because they liked drugging girls’ drinks and it was sure better to see it coming before the fact rather than after.

Asshole Number One looked ready to punch Steve a few more times. Asshole Number Two was looking around nervously because people were, in fact, looking at them. And studying them.

At which point a loud girl dressed like Judy Jetson leapt into the fray with a loud ‘JANE!’ She sized up the situation with a shrewd eye and whipped out a tazer, pointing it at the Two Assholes. And that was the exact moment Sam burst onto the scene and started demanding answers.

Everyone was suddenly in a hurry to be anywhere else, most especially the Two Assholes. They tried to melt into the crowd. Asshole Number One grabbed a hold of a new guy and leaned towards him talking in low tones. The new guy was staring at Steve as Asshole Number One spoke and then his face twisted into a sneer before yelling “Back off!”

Sam and Judy Jetson were working to get Steve and Jane the hell out of there but Steve studied the new guy and committed his face to memory. The Two Assholes were actually the Three Assholes and he was not going to get ambushed by any of them.

===============================

What Steve didn’t know was that Bucky had found some generous party goers and had kicked back with a group of them and some very good weed for a bit. He wandered around with a nice heady baked feeling for a bit before hearing a commotion and wondering what it was.

The beautiful little cat boy he had taken a shine to at the beginning of the evening was now the angry and bloody beautiful little cat boy and seemed to be the epicenter of whatever the hell was happening. Bucky was considering if it was the right time to go and introduce himself to the angry little cat boy. The guy was bleeding rather profusely, after all. Maybe he had a handkerchief?

No, not likely. Last Bucky checked, he wasn’t in his nineties.

He was about to go over anyway and offer assistance, if he could, but he was still struck dumb by just how _beautiful_ the cat boy was. The effects of the excellent weed had his vision going a little fuzzy and he could swear he heard the jangling tones of ‘Sweet Jane’ as he stared.

And then Rumlow jumped into his line of vision.

Brock Fucking Rumlow.

Bucky had known Brock in high school. They both played JV Baseball together their first two years. Brock had moved onto Varsity but Bucky had been interested in pursuing other things. He got into engineering in a big way and baseball, while fun, wasn’t a priority. Bucky didn’t see much of Brock after that which was a good thing because Brock was an asshole.

And here he was getting in the way of his view of the beautiful, angry, little cat boy.

Was there no justice in the world?

Rumlow was saying something. Bucky didn’t care and wasn’t listening. He scowled and growled ‘Back off!’

But Bucky didn’t quite realize that he’d never taken his eyes off the angry cat boy. He didn’t quite realize that, from Steve’s point of view, the scowl and the growl had been directed at him.

So it happened; the Great Misunderstanding.

=========================

Steve, Sam, Jane and Judy Jetson who, it turned out, was Jane’s friend and roommate Darcy were heading across campus to the med center. Steve somehow managed to tell the story while attempting to stop the flow of blood from his broken nose but it was hardly the first time he’d ever had to do that in his life. “My kingdom for an ice pack,” he muttered at the end of it. His entire face hurt. Luckily, blood stains would only make his Clash shirt cooler and more authentic. _Silver lining, Steve,_ he told himself.

“Hold still f’r jus’a’minute…” Jane almost fell over as she stopped. Luckily, Darcy had a hold of her arm and kept her upright.

“Jane, come on,” Darcy insisted. “We’ve got to get you both to urgent care…”

Jane fumbled for Steve’s shirt to steady herself. “I c’n set it.”

Sam’s eyes were wide, which was an interesting counterpoint to Steve’s narrowed eyes. “Um, you can barely stand,” Sam pointed out.

“I c’n do this…” Jane placed her hands on Steve’s face, fingers gently touching around his nose. “‘S gonna hurt.” Without further warning, she jerked her hands and reset Steve’s crooked, bleeding nose.

He jumped with a grunt. “It did.” He could tell, however, that it was reset pretty well. “Nice work.”

She smiled blearily at him.

“Okay, can we get back to heading to urgent care?”

“Uh huh,” Jane nodded and took Steve’s hand.

Steve’s head was throbbing and his face just felt like a gigantic bruise and he sent an apologetic look in Sam’s direction. “Sorry man,” he said softly.

Sam’s hand was firm on Steve’s shoulder. “None of this is your fault.” He cast a furtive look behind them to make sure that the Assholes Steve had told them about weren’t following them.

“Doesn’t mean I’m not sorry for ruining your night.”

“I don’t look at it that way,” Sam told him. “I figure this is a story that’s going to be worth telling once your nose is healed.”

“You’ll probably wind up with a store of those,” Steve sighed. “Nights Steve has ruined by trying to be a hero.”

Darcy looked over at them grimly. “You _are_ a hero,” she said, brooking no argument as she worked to keep Jane upright. “We all know what would have happened if you hadn’t jumped in.”

They all fell silent at that, trying not to think about what Steve had prevented and unable to not think about it.

“Who _was_ that guy?” Darcy finally asked.

“I have no idea,” Steve said. “Getting his name was less important than getting her away from him.” He nodded his head at Jane and then winced slightly at the movement.

Darcy just stared at him for a moment as they walked but she didn’t respond despite looking like she had a lot of things to say. They got to the urgent care in short order to find it fairly well populated which wasn’t a surprise on Halloween night. The amount of blood on Steve’s face and clothes put him at the top of the list but he insisted Jane be seen first, angrily insisting when the nurse attempted to put him off.

Ultimately, Steve agreed to be seen right away but brought Jane with him. Darcy and Sam followed as well and the intern decided not to argue since she needed information on what happened.

What happened was that Steve got very belligerent very quickly over the lack of any real concern for what happened to Jane. When the doctor asked for the name of the person who had drugged her, Steve shut up immediately and looked furious. At himself. Sam made a mental note immediately to keep his eyes open and start asking around to see if he could ferret out the identities of the guys who did this.

It seemed a pretty minimal thing to do after what Steve had done that night.

Jane and Darcy got an Uber to take them back across campus while Steve and Sam walked. Their dorm wasn’t too far from the medical center.

“I apologize in advance for the snoring,” Steve said, his voice altered quite a bit due to the new bandage on his nose and gauze stuffed up his nostrils to quell the bleeding. He also had an icepack that he alternated across his cheekbones and nose. Sam helped steer him when the pack got in the way of his vision.

“Not really worried about that, man,” Sam assured him.

“You say that now,” Steve teased.

Sam turned his head to stare at Steve. “You don’t seem to care at all that your nose is broken.”

Steve shrugged. “Not the first time.”

“You want to tell me about it?”

“They aren’t very interesting stories.”

Sam doubted that. He was pretty sure that each story was Steve standing up for someone, or maybe just himself, surrounded by a crowd of jeering idiots like the scene he had exploded into just about an hour ago. “Maybe we should have gone to the LGBT+ party, huh?”

Steve looked at Sam and smiled softly. “No. We went to the right place. I’m not sorry at all.”

Sam kind of felt like he wanted to be Steve when he grew up.

===========================

Two days later, Darcy and Jane showed up at Sam and Steve’s with two pizzas, sodas, chips and cupcakes.

“We brought you a heroic feast,” Darcy declared when Jane hugged Steve really tight for longer than might be considered appropriate.

Steve pat Jane’s back gently. “Hey, it’s okay.”

“It is okay,” she agreed, pulling back, “because of you. You do realized we’re friends now, right? I mean, you don’t go through that without becoming friends.”

“It’s a rule,” Darcy agreed. “Harry Potter said so.”

Sam laughed. “Well, yeah, you guys did face down a troll together.”

“Two of them,” Steve said sourly. “And then a third showed up right at the end.”

“Anyway,” Jane continued firmly. “Friends.” She smiled at Steve.

Jane, Steve realized, had a really beautiful smile.

“Not everyone would have done what you did,” she said, a hint of sadness in her voice. “The kind of person who does do what you did is the kind of person I want to be friends with.”

“Well…” Steve sighed heavily and scratched the back of his neck. “I know what it’s like to be a target. I know what it’s like to know that one person saying or doing something would make all the difference.” He looked at the floor, glaring at it so fiercely it was amazing the the rug didn’t start to smolder. “I made a decision a long time ago that I was going to be that one person no matter what.”

“What happened, Steve?” Sam asked softly.

Steve breathed out a harsh laugh. “You guys don’t want to hear about my shitty high school years… or middle school years… or elementary school years… believe me. The stories aren’t that fun.”

Jane studied him for a few moments. “I was, still am, small and really good at science. I love really dorky things and never cared much about clothes and boy bands and stuff. I got bullied all the time. I had good teachers, though.”

Steve nodded. His teachers were stressed out with a overloaded classrooms and not a lot of support because no one expected much from his part of Brooklyn. He wasn’t about to start talking about what it was like to be an easy target for a lot of kids who needed a target. That was not his life anymore. It’s why he had worked so hard to get scholarships… to get out and away. One hand curved around his ribs, an old habit from a particularly nasty encounter from his past. Steve didn’t have support within his school, it came from without when it came at all.

Sam was studying him carefully. “How bad was it, Steve?”

All of the focus in the room was on him and Steve reacted by savagely biting into a slice of pizza. “I’m not getting into that,” he insisted. “It’s a bummer thing to talk about and I’d prefer to leave it back there. School sucked. You know that ‘It gets better’ campaign? Yeah, well, it had to… because getting worse…” Steve frowned and started at his half eaten pizza for a few moments. “Well, anyway, it’s better. Let’s just leave it at that.”

Jane, genius that she was, started talking about her major and asking what everyone else was studying. Soon they were talking about classes and schedules and working out when they were free to get together for meals. Then they were talking about movies and books and music and Jane promised to let Steve wear her elf headdress because he couldn’t stop talking about how beautiful it was. 

Steve felt pretty good about things. For the first time, he had stuck his neck out and it had been appreciated. He hadn’t done it to make friends with anyone (that had never worked in the past) but it was true what his mother told him… college was different. He had to get out of the small, cramped part of Brooklyn he was raised in to stretch out and find people who were willing to stretch out as well.

It felt good. It felt amazing. It felt like all of those things he believed in were worth believing in after all.

And so, a beautiful friendship was born.

About a week later, Bucky finally got another glimpse of the beautiful, angry cat boy. This time, he was wearing a very fancy elven headpiece and was arguing with Rumlow about something. The cat boy, or elf boy, was flanked by a group of friends one of whom was the black Han Solo from Halloween but Bucky didn’t remember the others. He went up to see what the situation was but, again, found himself a little dazed and tongue-tied in the cat-elf boy’s sparkling presence.

Which led to Rumlow slinging an arm around Bucky’s shoulders and saying something snide to the cat-elf boy. Bucky didn’t appreciate that very much considering he didn’t like Rumlow at all but then the cat-elf boy called Rumlow a piece of shit and suggested that anyone who hung out with him was a shit stain garbage person. He stalked off with his friends before Bucky could think of something to say or to shrug Rumlow’s arm off his shoulder.

It wasn’t until December that Bucky found out that the cat-elf boy’s name was Steve Rogers. (Natasha got that information because Steve did a lot of sketching during dance classes. She also gave Bucky the information that Steve liked guys _and_ girls because he had hooked up with two members of the dance department. Natasha was excellent for intel like that.) It took _months_ for Bucky to realize that Steve had been referring to _him_ as a shit stain garbage person during that confrontation with Rumlow. To be fair, since Bucky didn’t consider himself to be friends with Rumlow he didn’t think the description applied to him.

It took even longer for Bucky to realize Steve’s anger at him was _all_ because of Rumlow which, he admitted to himself, he probably should have guessed. Bucky was a smart guy but he could be pretty obtuse.

None of that got cleared up until the time Bucky got to be the hero and threw Brock Rumlow in a dumpster.

But that’s a different story.

**Author's Note:**

> The drinking advice that Steve's mother gave him was the exact same drinking advice my mother gave me before I went off to school. Everyone I've ever told that to responded with awe that my mother gave me useful advice. I always wondered what their mothers told them...


End file.
